Nearly all commercial broadcast radio and television channels present programs, such as movies, entertainment series episodes, news programs, sporting events, and the like, separated by, and possibly interspersed with, short advertisements or commercial messages that are presented to the user multiples times over a period of days, weeks, or months. Such is often true even of non-broadcast premium or subscriber-only channels, which present promotional advertising of upcoming programming to be presented on the channel. While a user may specifically choose the programs they wish to view, the user typically has no control over the commercials or advertisements shown during their desired programs. At the least, some of the commercials may be of little interest to the user. Worse, the user may find some advertisements annoying or even offensive in terms of the subject matter being presented, or in the manner in which the information is presented, such as by way of faster video edits, louder audio in selected frequency ranges, and so on.
In the case of television commercials, the user may mute the audio portion of an undesirable advertisement, using the video portion of the commercial to determine when the advertisement has ended so that the audio portion may be restored. However, such a process leaves the video portion of the commercial visible to the user. In another case, the user may switch broadcast channels when an unwanted commercial is shown to avoid both the audio and video portions of the advertisement. However, in so doing, the user may not be aware of when presentation of the commercial is complete, thus either returning to the original channel too soon to see the remainder of the commercial, or too late to miss the resumption of the desired program being viewed. Further, the alternate channel to which the user has tuned may be carrying an even more undesirable programming segment, such as another commercial or an undesired feature presentation, at that time.